1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drawing apparatus, and a method of manufacturing an article.
2. Description of the Related Art
As one of apparatuses employed in a process of manufacturing, for example, a semiconductor device (lithography process), a multiple charged particle beam drawing apparatus which draws (transfers) a pattern on a substrate with, a plurality of charged particle beams (electron beams) has been proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-273006. A charged particle beam drawing apparatus makes a blanking deflector control ON and OFF of the irradiation of a substrate with a plurality of charged particle beams (control blanking of these charged particle beams), thereby drawing a pattern on the substrate. More specifically, a blanking control unit which, controls the blanking deflector stores, in a low speed, high capacity storage unit, drawing data which is transmitted front a drawing pattern data generation unit and serves to control the blanking operations of deflectors that constitute the blanking deflector. The drawing data necessary to draw a pattern is transmitted from the low speed, high capacity storage unit to a memory, and read out from the memory in synchronism with the blanking operation of the blanking deflector, thereby drawing a pattern on the substrate.
With miniaturization of semiconductor devices, a charged particle beam drawing apparatus is required to attain a drawing grid with a narrower pitch (a narrower drawing range of each charged particle beam). Also, to improve the productivity of semiconductor devices, the pattern drawing area of the apparatus is often widened by increasing the number of charged particle beams which allow simultaneous drawing. This enormously increases the size of drawing data for controlling the blanking operation of the blanking deflector, so the apparatus must be kept in a standby state until the end of storage (transmission) of the drawing data in (to) the storage unit or memory, thus lowering the throughput. This problem is posed not only in a multiple charged particle beam drawing apparatus but also in a single charged particle beam drawing apparatus.